A fanatical yoga practitioner, tattoo artist Kim Saigh takes a lot of the teachings of the discipline and puts it into her art. Allegorical and illustrative works that express movement and flow dominate Kim's portfolio. Tattooing professionally for 16 years, Kim first got her start in her native Cleveland, moving to Chicago and opening her first shop a few years later. Kim now splits her time between LA and Chicago but always has her black Persian cat, Geezer with her.
Kim loves narrative tattoos and is very influenced by fairy tale art, anything Asian, gods & goddesses. The art nouveau movement was a large influence in her artwork and her tattoos, you will notice the presence of the shapes of this period in allot of her work.
At her interview with Inked Magazine she states, "I was a total metalhead. I still am-always will be. When I really started listening to music and listening to metal, it kind of lit a fire under my ass. My mom was super religious, and I remember she would watch 700 Club and these televangelists, these shows on backward-masking and how heavy metal was evil and all this stuff. I was probably 8 or 9, and I remember them showing the cover of Black Sabbath's Black Sabbath and being totally haunted by that image seeing it on TV and not being scared of it at all, just wanting to hear it."
Kim grew up in the suburbs of Cleveland in a town called Westlake. It was very white collar, right wing, conservative. Everybody was Republican. "I was just a troublemaker, a lost sort of kid. In high school I started thinking that being a tattoo artist might be something I'd be good at. About a year after high school I walked into a tattoo shop with a friend I had drawn a design for, and the guys at the shop really liked it. They offered me an apprenticeship." - Read the Full interview at Inked Magazine
Want to find out what just a few of Kim Saigh's tattoo designs & symbols mean?
Check out: Rose Tattoos,
Butterfly Tattoos.
